Pets don’t only help teach kids how to be responsible, they’re also a harsh object lesson in the definitiveness of death — unless you go the robot route. Robo-puppies might not be believable just yet, but this tiny robot turtle looks pretty convincing when swimming around inside a tank. And if you find it just floating there one morning, all you need to do is change the batteries.

8 July 2014

Remember when dozens of mating turtles shut down a whole runaway at JFK International Airport in 2009? It was only the start of a turtle invasion that has vexed travellers and perplexed biologists for years. But we may have figured out why turtles are all over the tarmac, and it has to do with raccoons.

27 November 2013

Thanks to millions and millions of years of evolution, sea turtles work. They work well. They can swim stealthily around the ocean, sliding between chunks of coral if necessary. That in mind, it’s no wonder the sea creatures are the inspiration for the latest underwater robots.

24 April 2013

Even if they aren’t mutated into teenage ninjas, turtles might one day be a viable alternative to drones for espionage and surveillance. They come already armour-plated, they’re amphibious, they’re powered by plants, and thanks to their natural desire to avoid obstacles, researchers have found a clever way to even make them remote controllable.

4 July 2012

Google Glass is a big deal, and I can’t wait to try one out. Apparently, neither can these turtles, who are being fitted with wearable tracking technology of their own in order to study their movements around the Murray River system.

5 March 2012

Turtles have been around for millions of years, but millions of years ago, life was much tougher for them, thanks to the presence of a super-sized Crocodyliform that could flip them sideways and then crush them whole.

22 July 2011

Thankfully someone had the common sense to glue a wheel from a rolling office chair to our 12-year-old African tortoise-friend’s missing leg, instead of going down the popular route of making tortoise soup out of him.